Today's blockbuster ABC News report about White House and State Dept. involvement in revising the CIA’s Benghazi talking points has provided Republicans with new talking points in their effort to discredit former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. But Jonathan Karl, the ABC News White House correspondent who landed the scoop, says not so fast.

The emails obtained by Karl show that State Dept. spokesman Victoria Nuland raised objections to a paragraph in the talking points mentioning threats from extremists linked to Al Qaeda. When a round of revisions did not satisfy her concerns, she wrote back: “These changes don’t resolve all of my issues or those of my building's leadership."

In that reference to the "building's leadership," some see a reference to Sec. Clinton. But Karl says that to date, no such evidence exists.

"There's no evidence that I've seen that Hillary Clinton was aware of what was going on, or in any way tried to direct what was in these talking points," Karl told POLITICO on Friday morning. "But that sentence is certainly open to interpretation, and you can guarantee it is going to seized on by Republicans for a long time, because ultimately the leadership of that building is Hillary Clinton."

Republicans have been fighting to keep the Benghazi story alive for months, and the right-wing blogosphere has made it their r'aison d'etre. Despite front page reports in the New York Times and scoops from reporters like Karl, conservatives accuse the mainstream media of failing to adequately investigate the story.

Those accusations are likely to subside this weekend in the wake of Karl's report (and that of The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes), which comes on the heels of Wednesday's 'emotional' testimony from three State Dept. officials. Benghazi is now driving the news cycle and -- as my colleagues Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman pointed out on Thursday -- Hillary Clinton is once again fair-game for critics.

The Sunday shows will be almost entirely dedicated to the issue: ABC's "This Week," will feature interviews with Sens. John McCain and Jack Reed, and Gen. James Cartwright, retired Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will join the roundtable. CBS's "Face The Nation" will feature interviews with former Sec. of Defense Robert Gates and Sens. Dick Durbin and Kelly Ayotte. NBC's "Meet The Press" will have exclusive interviews with House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa and Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein.

But where the story goes after Sunday is anyone's guess.

"I have no idea how long this story will go on, but what is clear after this week is that there are still legitimate questions to be asked, and there's also going to be a political story regarding Hillary Clinton," Karl told POLITICO. "The story clearly has legs -- for how long, I just don't know."

Well then maybe the House needs to actually put Hillary Clinton UNDER OATH THIS TIME, and ask her what she knew, when she knew it, and other relevant questions. Stunning to think the Republican Leadership is so gutless they let her “testify” without, you know, making her testimony biding by swearing her in. Pathetic.

Well, of course. The reasons why people use phrases like “my building’s leadership” is specifically to avoid putting names on the record.

All paths in this case lead to Hillary Clinton. I hope and believe she isn’t going to take the fall on this one for Obama — if she is convinced that her goose is cooked, then I don’t see her wanting to go down alone.

We have two choices: either Hillary intentionally lied to the American people to protect her reputation, or Hillary is shockingly oblivious to a story that should at the time have been the center of her life. Either way, it’s a disqualifying flaw.

12
posted on 05/10/2013 11:11:04 AM PDT
by Pollster1
("Shall not be infringed" is unambiguous.)

“There’s no evidence that I’ve seen that Hillary Clinton was aware of what was going on, or in any way tried to direct what was in these talking points,”
++++++++++++++++++++
And why should she have? The only things that were at stake were her future political career and her plans to succeed Obama as President of the United States. Let the staff deal it. Nothing to see here. Time to move on.

16
posted on 05/10/2013 11:12:42 AM PDT
by InterceptPoint
(If I had a tag line this is where you would find it)

Prople on the intel committees knew that Al Quida was hired to guard an American Embassy. The rest of the world could go to a freaking web page and see an AQ battle flag on the Brigade’s home[age. The Intel people couldn’t? Please.

We don’t want to admit that ‘our’ people helped this disaster. But they did. The GOP sat on it’s ass for months and let the dems drive the media narrative. The RNC refused to run election ads on it. Romney refused to fight it out in the debates.

She will have her minions say she was not aware of the revisions to the talking points before they were repeated to all and sundry. But since she was on the phone with her staff in Libya, she certainly knew the talking points were incorrect, and yet she herself repeated them.

She can’t get out of this one. She says she didn’t know who changed the talking points, but she knew they were lies and she repeated them anyway.

She needs to be served a subpoena. She has a few more questions to answer.

maybe send that direct quote to him and aks him how on earth he couldn’t find any evidence when you foudn it with just a minute or two searching and ask him what he gets for a salary becvause it’;s obvious he doesn’t desefrve what he’s getting

The name of the law firm that Herself, the Cold and Joyless, once worked with, should have been changed to Waffle, Straddle & Backfill. Herself learned her fine points of legal argument (deny, obfuscate, use emotion in place of logic, and ignore any direct challenges) while serving there, yet was never known to provide any legal opinion worthy of the definition.

The only reason some people study law is to find the loopholes.

24
posted on 05/10/2013 11:22:32 AM PDT
by alloysteel
(If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.)

At about 5pm eastern time in Washington, were told that Obama met separately with Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta telling each they needed to handle the attack in Benghazi.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Panetta had the authority to order the military into action. And, conversely, neither could legally order the military to stand down during an attack on sovereign territory.

Obamas whereabouts after 5 pm are undocumented. We are to believe Obama was having fish tacos and watching TV...while a terrorist attack was occurring on the 10 year anniversary of 9-11.

When Benghazi happened, my first impression was that Hillary was strictly covering her own considerable rear end, that she knew what was being done, but separated herself from it to the extent possible. And then she refused to go on TV and present the cover story, thus Susan Rice was picked for that job and was not in a position to refuse.

She probably did know about the rewritten talking points, but was already heading for the tall grass, or for the wine tastings in Australia.

And she’s been distancing herself from the entire episode to the extent possible ever since. And I wonder if she really intended to resign as S of S when she did?

Nothing the Always Broadcast Communism (ABC) network does surprises me. Johnathan Karl committed a random act of journalism, so now he has to bury it under a hundred lies to maintain his creds with the MSM hive.

I wasnt involved in the talking points process.... As I understand it, as Ive been told, it was a typical interagency process where staff, including from the State Department, all participated, to try to come up with whatever was going to be made publicly available, and it was an intelligence product.

With all due respect,the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?Hillary Clinton

37
posted on 05/10/2013 11:47:13 AM PDT
by Grampa Dave
('How empty and dead' were they to let Chris Stevens, one of them , die for 'Obama-Clinton fiction?')

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